Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Amy Gallagher: You know, as a journalist, I'm accustomed to that, because the goal is the truth, facts, so that we can learn and make our own interpretation.
[00:00:15] Intro: Welcome to Hangar X Studios, where former fighter pilot and host John Ramstead takes us on a journey across aerospace as it enters an historic period of innovation and transformation.
Our guests include aviation experts, pilots, financiers, military leaders, and innovators of all types.
Buckle up for another episode of Hangar X.
[00:00:45] John Ramstead: All right. Hey, welcome to Hangar X Studios. And we're live at Verticon with another fantastic guest, Amy Gallagher. Amy, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:52] Amy Gallagher: Thank you, John. Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
[00:00:54] John Ramstead: Well, it was so great to connect with you because you're a journalist.
[00:00:58] Amy Gallagher: I am.
[00:00:58] John Ramstead: And you're also on the staff and part of airmed and Rescue, which is a phenomenal. I'm sure our audience is probably reading. And if not, you need to check it out. Check out airmed and rescue.com airmed and rescue.com, 122 countries.
[00:01:12] Amy Gallagher: Well, I have a readership of 122 countries as a journalist covering the global industry, military and civilian aviation, rescue and medical.
And we As a magazine, AMR Airman and Rescue reaches about 25,000 readers globally.
[00:01:31] John Ramstead: Yeah.
Every time it comes out. That's fantastic. And tell us a little bit about your background, because you were sharing it, like, from a little girl. You were actually in a safety training video on the F16 and into what you're doing now. So give us a little bit of your background.
[00:01:47] Amy Gallagher: Pivotal time.
So I was 10. My father was over the production of the F16 and working with the test pilots, and he lost his first test pilot.
And so he gathered a film crew and decided to put together an F16 FOD training video.
And so I played the daughter of the F16 test pilot who was killed in a test flight.
And it was a funeral procession.
No words. I didn't have to speak any words. I just stepped out of the family limo and looked up at the sky saying, where is my daddy, basically? Or my daddy's in heaven. So I was 10.
And so I got what happens. I understood clearly what happens when we're not following a realistic production schedule as opposed to being pushed through and adhering to every single safety standard and listening, you know, listening to.
To the team, listening to those in charge, I think is most important.
[00:02:53] John Ramstead: Well, you know, and I know that that mishap was from somebody left a wrench where they weren't supposed to leave a wrench.
[00:02:58] Amy Gallagher: That was the scenario.
[00:03:00] John Ramstead: And there's Something I haven't thought about in a while until you just said that. But I'll never forget when I was in my flight training in the T2 Buckeye in the Navy, my intermediate jet training. Yeah, we had a mishap. Close friend of mine passed away. And I was doing really good until after the service at the chapel. And they did the missing man flyby. And I wasn't expecting this. I hadn't seen it before. Four airplanes combined, then one peels off to go straight up.
And when I saw that, I just lost it. It was like all the motions hit me. And we thought it was pilot error, but what we found out was later when they recovered the aircraft, somebody had installed the throttle quadrant backwards, which it'll still operate correctly until it doesn't. And that's what caused the mishap, was a maintenance error. And, you know, that's just. That's just sometimes hard to reconcile because, you know, you're up there flying these air very. You know, I got to fly all the way through F14s and F16s. Navy had a few of those. But, yeah, it's pretty. It was a pretty sobering moment when you realize training both for maintenance and the pilots and everything that goes into it, when there's. When there's a, you know, a fatality, which we all want to avoid.
[00:04:05] Amy Gallagher: Right. And then we asked questions. Questions, right. I think the questions need to happen during the training, the teaching, when we're learning.
Bruce Webb offered a great session the other day.
Are we learning or are we training now?
[00:04:21] John Ramstead: Bruce from Airbus.
[00:04:21] Amy Gallagher: Right.
[00:04:22] John Ramstead: It was one of the presentations.
[00:04:23] Amy Gallagher: Correct.
And he's right on with. Are we learning? Are we learning and listening and do we feel safe? We feel the environment is safe enough to ask the tough questions. You know, as a journalist, I'm accustomed to that. Because the goal is the truth. Right?
[00:04:41] John Ramstead: Right.
[00:04:41] Amy Gallagher: Facts. So that we can learn and make our own interpretation. But if we're not presented with the truth, then how can we fairly reassess and know what needs to be improved to save lives?
[00:04:54] John Ramstead: Right. And how would you define the difference between learning and training?
[00:04:58] Amy Gallagher: Well, I'm also a certified teacher. After certifications, I taught grades four through 12 and tutored nursing students at TCU.
I think learning versus training is learning. You're engaged.
Right.
So every instructor, every teacher, from Blackhawk instructors to F16, we need to hear back from the students. We need to know each one of our students personally, as in one on one and engaging them. What is your passion? What is your fear?
And so unless you have those individual one on one conversations. You're just speaking to one class of people as a whole versus individual personalities that make up those two people in the cockpit, essentially.
And managing communications in the cockpit is a part of that. How do you communicate?
Do you receive the right information at the right time?
So it's so dynamic and it's not the bright and shiny thing. It's not sexy. You know, training is not sexy sexy. It's not a profit center.
[00:06:08] John Ramstead: It's not that safety program feels like extra work sometimes.
[00:06:11] Amy Gallagher: Yeah, absolutely. And teaching too. It can be draining. Instructing can be draining.
It definitely has to be a passion to impart that knowledge and making sure we have well qualified instructors. Of course, there's a pilot shortage and an instructor shortage too. So we're in a push to hurry up and train pilots, you know, recruit pilots. And that's another, another topic altogether that's affecting the overall industry.
So it's great to see all of these wonderful, you know, new aircraft and, and the avionics and the engines and the technology. But unless the teams must be working with the technology in the training to experience that transformation.
So change does happen when you're learning, but it needs to be a transformation as a team.
[00:07:06] John Ramstead: What's the transformation that needs to happen?
[00:07:10] Amy Gallagher: The honesty, the transparency, I guess getting real with the deal about why pilots are dying, why Black Hawks are colliding, why are there collisions?
And it's usually a host or a matrix of multiple variables. Right.
But when you start checking your checklist, was the right technology installed?
Did the Black Hawk have aircraft proximity warning device installed?
[00:07:43] John Ramstead: Is the, did the crew know how to use what was installed exactly, or were they using it properly or just.
[00:07:49] Amy Gallagher: Is it even installed in the first place?
So I understand the need to conduct national security missions.
I read recently about a 1996 Black Hawk collision in Australia. The Australian military, they lost 18 crew members.
They decided as a country, both the military and the federal government decided together that they would install the aircraft proximity warning devices in 1996.
So I'm an American.
I love aviation. I love flying.
It's in my family.
My father was over the Apache production as well.
[00:08:31] John Ramstead: Oh, wow.
[00:08:32] Amy Gallagher: My son is a Black Hawk pilot and I've been an internationally published journalist covering military and civilian aviation for 18 years. So I read a quote from the, one of the NTSB investigators about the Potomac recently and she said, I'm very angry, but I'm also very sad about why this is happening. So, you know, it doesn't make sense when it happens. When we have the greatest technology, the greatest minds we have, we have the money, we have the funding.
So why does it happen? And I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, but, you know, I've been in this industry long enough if you count the age of 10, a few years, few decades now, so you start to see what really needs to.
To happen.
[00:09:23] John Ramstead: So if you've researched and dug into this, what are some maybe best practices you're seeing both in the military and the civilian side? Because there's different stakeholders. Right. We have student pilots.
[00:09:32] Amy Gallagher: Right.
[00:09:32] John Ramstead: In both areas, we have the people that are now maybe moving toward their commercial. Right. Or you have people that are now professional pilots. You also have the departments, you have the instructors.
Right. There's different stakeholders in this whole safety ecosystem.
There's the mindset of each organization and the management.
So that said, what are some of the maybe best practices that as an industry, we should be paying attention to? Like, what do you see that's working?
[00:10:00] Amy Gallagher: Well, I like the term proficiency culture.
[00:10:03] John Ramstead: Yeah, you said that before. I do like that.
[00:10:05] Amy Gallagher: It's. It raises the bar a bit and it awakens us to the fact that the word safety is underappreciated and over.
[00:10:14] John Ramstead: It could become a bit of a buzzword.
[00:10:15] Amy Gallagher: Right.
[00:10:16] John Ramstead: So when you say proficiency, what kind of proficiency would that be?
[00:10:20] Amy Gallagher: That each person is held accountable to his or her own proficiency levels. And not only that, I think each pilot, each crew member, you know, aspires to be the best. Right. Otherwise they wouldn't be in aviation. It's very competitive, and, yeah, it has some dangers to it. But are they also in a place in an environment where they can speak? What's really going on with them? Honestly?
There was another session I attended.
Susan Giddings CLINICAL So the medical side of flying is. Is the pilot suffering from ptsd? Active duty Blackhawk.
So. And they're still flying, but they can't say anything. Right. Because the DoD might, you know, frown upon that. So that's what I'd like to see changed. Because if you're not in a safe learning environment, and every workplace should be a learning environment.
[00:11:26] John Ramstead: Right. Well, and learning organizations have a huge advantage. I mean, that's the entire mindset of Marine Corps leadership, is to create a learning environment.
[00:11:35] Amy Gallagher: Right.
[00:11:35] John Ramstead: Yep.
[00:11:36] Amy Gallagher: Where we're all asking why and why not?
As a journalist, you know, every journalist has to answer the five W's. Who, what, where, when and why.
But I add the five senses to that because that's where you get the personal connection. Well, what did you see, what did it feel like?
I mean, what did it smell like? I mean, I taught this, you know, to fourth graders. Pretend like you're a baseball.
Well, what does a baseball smell like, Mrs. Gallagher? What does it taste like? Well, when it hits the grass, it tastes like grass. I mean, we have to get deeper.
[00:12:12] John Ramstead: I was going to say dirt and leather, but, you know, here's an interesting anecdote, though, for you because, you know, the military culture, when we'd show up for a brief, we'd go around and I would say, engine fire on flight. And you'd have to recite the bold face in front of everybody. Everybody got a different emergency procedure. So we were constantly holding each other accountable. And I recently did a transition to the SR22. Right. So I read the entire flight manual and I created flashcards for every procedure, an emergency procedure, and memorize them. Before my first flight with my instructor, and I had my cars with me.
[00:12:46] Amy Gallagher: So you're a professional student.
[00:12:48] John Ramstead: And he said, nobody's ever done this. So my 20 hour transition worked out to be six.
But I'm just thinking, you know what I do see?
I don't want to throw any shade, but I do see sometimes a culture in the civilian world, like, even flying Cessnas, I bet a lot, I bet most of the student pilots haven't taken personal responsibility of really understanding, like, what we have in the military, the NATOPS, right.
The owner's manual, the PoH, the emergency procedures, and commit to proficiency.
Because you don't know when that engine's going to quit or an alternator is going to fail or there's fire or smoke. And then now lives are at risk both in your plane and on the ground.
I think it's also making it cool to actually have that level of proficiency.
[00:13:35] Amy Gallagher: I think the word cool would go a long way in aviation because we are competitive. We compete with each other even at this show at Verticon, right?
[00:13:45] John Ramstead: Yep.
[00:13:46] Amy Gallagher: In different ways. So I think too, we need mentors, more mentors in aviation.
[00:13:56] John Ramstead: And I'd like to see the CFIs also, you know, raise the standard of excellence.
[00:14:00] Amy Gallagher: Yes, right.
[00:14:01] John Ramstead: They should be doing that, too.
[00:14:02] Amy Gallagher: Right. The sky was never the limit. Right.
[00:14:05] John Ramstead: If the students knew they were going to get quizzed or each flight after they're proficient with basic flying, there was going to be some kind of emergency procedure thrown at them.
[00:14:11] Amy Gallagher: Right?
[00:14:12] John Ramstead: Right. Guess what?
[00:14:13] Amy Gallagher: You have to be prepared.
[00:14:14] John Ramstead: You're going to modify people's attitudes and behavior, how they show up, and you.
[00:14:20] Amy Gallagher: Want to be that person who is ready. No matter what.
[00:14:23] John Ramstead: Yeah, right.
[00:14:24] Amy Gallagher: And even asking a question, well, what if this happened instead real quickly?
[00:14:28] John Ramstead: Yeah, I love the what ifs.
Not always in my own life. Well, what if. But, Amy, you know what? You're doing such great work and I'd love to keep the conversation going and I'd love to have you back on where we can do kind of a full format interview after Verticon. So just as we wrap up, just any final thoughts you'd like to leave everybody listening?
[00:14:48] Amy Gallagher: Well, after interviewing pilots and researchers and surgeons and flight crews, from Hurricane Harvey to the amazing work they did there, the National Guard.
My sources are precious to me. And I know not every journalist may say that, but I am privileged to be a journalist and be able to brag about their work using their words. So a big shout out to every person I've ever interviewed, and there's probably been over a thousand in my career.
And read. I encourage reading, listening, and learning and then asking questions. Even if you feel like you're going to get, I don't know, in trouble or frowned upon or dismissed, be that person, you know, that speaks.
[00:15:44] John Ramstead: That also should be a red flag, maybe about your culture, too.
If I'm afraid to speak up to my chief pilot or to a coworker or pilot. Why is that? That might be a good question to ask yourself, is maybe this isn't the organization I'd be in, or can I positively impact this organization and make it a little more safe to be talking about issues that could. Life could depend on it.
[00:16:06] Amy Gallagher: And I think that's where and when true leaders step up.
[00:16:10] John Ramstead: Yep, 100%.
Well, Amy, thank you for the work you're doing and for coming over, and I look forward to our next conversation.
[00:16:17] Amy Gallagher: Absolutely. Thank you for your service, too.
[00:16:19] John Ramstead: Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks, Amy.
